I was sipping tea at a nearby café when an acquaintance walked in, spotted me, came over and we got to chatting about her new website. “A friend made my website,” she said proudly. “Can you look at it?” This conversation has been repeated hundreds of times in the 20 years since I chose website work as a career. It’s like the moment somebody learns you are a doctor or massage therapist, and you are asked to “look” at something. There’s no way to diagnose a website, weird spot on a cheek or pain upon bending without having additional information. I bring up my favorite browser on my smartphone, type in the URL and put on my best straight face. Experience with…

Checklists for website owners on strict budgets are life savers. Digital marketing, search engine marketing, off-line marketing, social media marketing and more are terms you may hear, but don’t understand. What kinds of marketing do you need? Is it something you can do or teach yourself? Take a breath. You are absolutely not alone and help is out there. Affordable, expert, generous, accurate help. While I strongly encourage hiring a professional internet marketer, some experts can be expensive. When I was starting out I relied on free help and generous people willing to mentor me. However, that was 20 years ago. In those days, more people were learning together. There was value in sharing our discoveries in forums and less…

When you land on a webpage, what frustrates you? Is it how long it takes to load, ads covering up content, or the visual complexity of the page? The answer depends on who you are, what device you are using and what you need. If you are to believe search engine marketing experts, the ultimate end goal for all web pages is to rank at the top for users’ search queries. This is their truth. Page load time is the main goal for user experience. When Google launched its mobile test tool, marketers sounded the alarm because now web pages must render on smart phones to be included in Google’s index. Bing has introduced their own mobile requirements. Online marketers want content…

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] What used to be a simple case of learning HTML in 1995 is now an exercise that requires HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, a database, and PHP. This code has to work in all browsers, all operating systems, and on all computer devices no matter what size the screen is. If you want an ecommerce website, find the shopping cart that works with your website. If you want to incorporate a custom software application, call a programmer. If you want your web pages to appear in Google’s mobile device search engine, it has to pass their mobile test. If you want to rank well in any search engine results, you need to…